Bangladesh: Secular bloggers live in fear after spate of killings

NASA launches Kepler telescope in quest for earth-like planets

In its first attempt to look for earth-like planets, NASA launched Friday the Kepler space telescope. The mission will last three years and cost close to 600 million dollars.

AFP - NASA Friday launched the Kepler space telescope atop a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a three year mission to search for Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

Kepler will stare at the same spot in space for three and a half years, taking in about 100,000 stars around the Cygnus and Lyra constellations of the Milky Way.

At a cost of nearly 600 million dollars, it will be the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's first mission in search of Earth-like planets orbiting suns similar to ours, at just the right distance and temperature for life-sustaining water to exist.